This article certainly raises more questions than it answers.

The bottomline I take from it is that "race" is far more the result of sociological and environmental factors than it is of genetic ones.

He seems to be saying our race is imposed on us by sociological processes more than anything in our DNA.

I think when we speak of "race" in terms of racism, there's the understood proposition from those we term racist that we can not only differentiate between the races in terms of behavior and genetics, but we can also pass judgement-- "scientific" judgement on which race is superior to others.

There might be, in forensic terms, an ability to discern "Black" DNA from "White" DNA, but this does not lend scientific authenticity to the idea that one race might be "superior" to another, which is the contention of racists.

So, in the framework of our debates here on racism, it's still, I believe, correct to say that there's no genetic basis for the concept of race. It might be more correct now to say there's no genetic basis for racism.

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it's still, I believe, correct to say that there's no genetic basis for the concept of race. It might be more correct now to say there's no genetic basis for racism.

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This could mean two things Tommy one of which I agree with and one I don't. If you mean that you cannot use genetics to prop up your feelings of racial superiority, I agree.

However if you mean to say there is not a genetic predisposition to racist feelings then I would disagree. The evolutionary phychologist in me would say that tribalism and "fear of the other" are part of the baseline human behaviour. It was once a behaviour that had decided evolutionary benefits, as it still does for chimps, but has become the bain of modern human existance.

Yes, upon review, what I mean to say is there's no genetic basis for the idea that one race can be superior to another in regards to human rights and liberty and all that good stuff.

I suppose one could say that "whites" are genetically superior at utilizing sunlight to produce vitamin D, while blacks are inferior, in northern climates. And, I suppose blacks are better at blocking harmful U.V. radiation than whites between the tropics.

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Race, itself a fluid idea, is part of the environmental context of the genome, Duster suggests. "Race is a relationship," he says. "When you talk about race as a relationship, it prevents anyone from giving it false meaning."

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I think I get what he is saying. For examle, my cousin, who is as "white" as me (almost transparent, really) has a daughter who's father is "black" (actually more brown, but you get what I mean) Their daughter has dark skin when standing next to her mother - you can tell her father is obviously darker than her mother - but compared to most of her classmates (I walk her to school often), she is of an 'average' skin tone.

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A friend of mine, who hails from Guyana, has quite dark skin, yet his parents, both of whom are of African descent, are quite (comparatively) light skinned.

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So FBI given all this genetic evidence of racelessness, is that whack job Rushton still teaching his skull and penis size crap at UWO?

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Um, I don't go to Western. I don't know. And I don't care what size your penis is. (I really don't )

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and, jeebus, isn't getting a wee bit complicated yet?

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I was thinking about this earlier tonight in connection with male/female miscomunication.

I wonder how much of this is due to pattern recognition? We humans do love our patterns. We'd prefer to simplify by looking for patterns, and I think this goes awry when we apply this kind of problem solving to human relationships.

It'd be simple to say "(all)women think this way" or, "(all) natives are such and such," because, I'm guessing, it's too daunting a task for some to come to grips that there's billions of people on the planet that require as many different approaches to understanding? The tendancy is to simplify by looking for patterns, or even inventing them when we can't. Put that together with a propensity for xenophobia, and we have a rather bad adaptation for these modern times.

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The tendency is to simplify by looking for patterns, or even inventing them when we can't.

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This is not a tendency it is an important skill for animals, necessary for us to make sense of the world, without it we would be totally screwed.

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Put that together with propensity for xenophobia

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.... not so much, ya we might be leery of that which we don't understand, but we have such a profound sense of curiosity and a need to understand our world that we quickly come to know most of what surrounds us - we launch people into space hoping to find something new for God's sake, this is not a xenophobic trait at all - if anything the opposite.

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and we have a rather bad adaptation for these modern times.

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The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. This is a critique of the development of positivist social psychology regarding of the idea and practices of a quantifiable intelligence a.k.a. IQ.

Not In Our Genes by Steven Rose, R.c. Lewontin, Leon J. Kamin. This book is subtitled 'Biology, Ideology and Human Nature". Written by Marxist scientists and critics of 1980s style biodeterminism, this book is generally useful for critical studies in biology, race and racism, gender, and "twin" research.

White On Black - Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture by Jan Nederveen Pieterse. Written from a Dutch writer this book can be a bit inappicable vis a vis Anglo-Canadian culture, but it is full of very interesting historical information, and LOTS of fascinating and awful racist images. One of the few school books I've had that I wouldn't want to display... The racist imagery is both appalling and compelling, which I think means that it hits a real nerve.